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On Record: Royal Ballet Sinfonia / Pete Harrison: Adam Saunders Orchestral Music (Heritage Records)

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Royal Ballet Sinfonia / Pete Harrison, Gavin Sutherland (The Magical Kingdom), Barry Wordsworth (Journey to Lapland)

Adam Saunders
The Magical Kingdom (2003)
Fairytale Sleighride (2008)
Journey to Lapland (2020)
Ballet for Strings (2025)
Capriccio (2025)
Parade of the Snowman (2025)
Sinfonietta (2025)
Sketches of New York (2025)
Three Pieces (2025)

Heritage Records HTGCD117 [68’12”]
Producer Philip Lane Engineers Tony Faulkner, Mike Ross-Trevor (The Magical Kingdom)

Recorded 4 February 2023 at CTS, Wembley (The Magical Kingdom), 12 September 2023 (Journey to Lapland) and 2, 3 January 2026 (all other works) at Henry Wood Hall, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

His work having featured on several of its miscellanies, Heritage now issues an album devoted to the music of Adam Sanders (b.1968); his skill when navigating various genres and blurring of easy distinctions between ‘light’ or ‘serious’ music made evident throughout this collection.

What’s the music like?

His music often having an illustrative or pictorial aspect does not lessen Saunders’ technical command in a medium for which he has keen affinity. This is as evident in the earlier pieces here as in those more recent works that, between them, make up the larger part of this album.

The curtain-raiser that is Capriccio having launched proceedings with wit and insouciance, Three Pictures demonstrates Saunders’ all-round versatility across three movements which take in the animated Fanfare and Celebrations, the raptly evocative landscape conjured by Rivers of Calm, Peaks of Magnificence, then the final burst of activity conveyed through Dances of Exuberance. With its often resourceful scoring for strings and harp, Sketches of New York is the highlight of this collection – whether in the pulsating while never mindless activity which characterizes Bustling Metropolis, the elegiac expression of Lonely Souls, the lilting elegance of Green Dances, or the lively and joyful abandon of A City at Play.

If the sprightly and entertaining march-past that is Parade of the Snowman has not become a regular seasonal fixture on Classic FM, it certainly ought to be. As, for that matter, should The Magical Kingdom which subtly refits the British light music from an earlier era for the present day. It lasts barely 10 minutes overall, but Sinfonietta cannily outlines a symphony   in miniature as it moves from the spirited incisiveness of its initial Allegro, via the tranquil eloquence of its Adagio then the humorous resolve of its Scherzo, to the brilliant display of its final Allegro. One of the relatively few abstract compositions in Saunders’ output, this is also one of the most appealing and it would be worth the composer building on its promise.

Fairytale Sleighride finds Saunders back on familiar ground and what is another miniature made for Christmas with tuned percussion to the fore. More substantial (indeed the longest overall work on this collection) is Ballet for Strings – its five movements at once dance-like though self-sufficient in content as they take in expressive characters which are respectively humorous in intent; gracious while not a little nostalgic; animated but with searching asides; delicate in scoring if robust in spirit; then energetic to a degree that sees the overall sequence through to a decisive close. It only remains for Journey to Lapland to round off proceedings with its ‘adventure’ being played out for the pleasure and enjoyment of listeners everywhere.

Does it all work?

It does. Those having heard Saunders’ overture Pirates Ahoy! (Dutton CDLX7190) or one of the seasonal pieces on Heritage’s Christmas anthologies (HTGCD139 and HTGCD299) will find much to enjoy, not least with the Royal Ballet Sinfonia so attuned to his attractive idiom.

Is it recommended?

It is, not least as enhanced with excellent sound produced by and informative booklet notes written by Philip Lane, among the leading British light-music composers of his generation. Hopefully there will be further opportunities to hear Saunders’ orchestral work before long.

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options at the Heritage Records website. Click on the names for more information on composer Adam Saunders, the Royal Ballet Sinfonia and conductors Pete Harrison, Gavin Sutherland and Barry Wordsworth

Published post no.3,003 – Tuesday 1 September 2026

On Record – Raphael Wallfisch, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods – John McCabe: Symphonies 2 & 3 and Cello Concerto (Signum Classics)

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Raphael Wallfisch (cello), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

John McCabe
Symphony no.2 (1970-71)
Symphony no.3 ‘Hommages’ (1978)
Cello Concerto ‘Songline’ (2007)

Signum Classics SIGCD1007 [67’32”]
Producer Andrew Keener Engineer Oscar Torres, Matthew Swan

Recorded 9-11 June 2025 at City Halls, Glasgow

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Signum Classics makes a notable addition to the discography of John McCabe (1939-2015) with his Second and Third Symphonies, alongside his Cello Concerto, given committed and perceptive performances from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with Kenneth Woods.

What’s the music like?

Ranging over four decades, McCabe’s seven symphonies are a defining factor of his output and his achievement overall. An ability to reassess the genre afresh each time is hardly less true of those 20 or so concertos which, between them, encompass the entirety of his career.

Certain listeners may have encountered the Second Symphony via Louis Frémaux’s recording (EMI/Warner) made soon after the premiere. The catalyst was Sam Peckinpah’s Western The Wild Bunch (1969) and though McCabe does not follow this hard-hitting scenario literally, he does chart its emotional and maybe its experiential trajectory. A speculative woodwind phrase pervades the single movement whose five sections purposefully alternate fast and slow tempi, incisive and reflective moods, on its course to a visceral while cathartic denouement. That the work emerges full circle, the same yet different, comes as no surprise given its inspiration in a film which was unyielding in its fatalism but highly enlightening through its innate realism.

The stylistic consistency of McCabe’s idiom across several decades is borne out by his Cello Concerto, the ‘Songline’ of whose subtitle references that route taken through its content by the listener akin to aboriginals tracing a physical path through the Australian terrain; even a psychological path through their culture. Tersely though cogently argued, its outer Allegros frame a lengthy Adagio that takes in elements of slow movement and scherzo – separated by an accompanied cadenza where the soloist interacts with luminous tuned percussion in what ranks among its composer’s most eloquent inspirations. Neither are those closing bars, their abruptness dispelling any equivocation, seem other than inevitable in terms of a conclusion.

Stemming from what was a productive period for the genre in the UK, the Third Symphony is a highlight of McCabe’s output. The ‘Hommages’ of its subtitle makes reference to Haydn and Nielsen – but any such allusions are merged into a cumulative structure whose three (more or less) continuous movements unfold from an oblique if stealthy sonata design, via a ‘Fantasia’ more intermezzo than slow movement, to a ‘Fugue-Variations’ which gradually propels the whole orchestra towards an inexorable culmination with resplendent brass then ricocheting percussion. One of the most visceral endings in the modern symphonic repertoire that made an audible impression at its premiere, 48 years ago, and would doubtless do so again today.

Does it all work?

Yes, not least with Woods so attuned to McCabe’s idiom: the Second Symphony less taut if more flexible than Frémaux’s pioneering account and the Third a reminder of why Charles Dutoit’s premiere left such an impact. Nor is Raphael Wallfisch at all wanting in Songlines.

Is it recommended?

Indeed, enhanced by spacious yet detailed sound with informative notes from Guy Rickards. Hopefully Woods and the BBCSSO will take McCabe’s final two symphonies into the studio, while such major works as the Third Piano and Second Violin Concertos also await recording.

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options at the Signum Records website, and listen to excerpts from the album at Presto Music. Click on the names to read more about composer John McCabe, cellist Raphael Wallfisch, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and conductor Kenneth Woods

Published post no.2,986 – Tuesday 17 August 2026

On Record: Ofra Yitzhaki – Josef Tal: Piano Works 1936–2000 (NEOS Music)

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Ofra Yitzhaki (piano)

Josef Tal
Sonata for Piano (1949)
Five Densities (1975)
Three Pieces (1937)
Concerto no.5 for Piano and Magnetic Tape (1964)
By the Rivers of Babylon (1951)
Six Sonnets (1946)
Essay IV (1997)
Essay V (2000)
Chaconne (1936)

NEOS Music 12520 [82’04”]
Producers Alexander Hainz and Dominik Weinmann Engineer Robin Bös

Recorded 1-3 September 2022 at Hessian Radio Studio, Frankfurt am Main

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

The enterprising NEOS Music label releases an anthology of piano music by Josef Tal (2010-2008), the German-born Israeli composer who did much to advance the cause of new music in Israel during the post-war era and whose varied output confirms him as a significant creative figure.

What’s the music like?

Little heard in the UK (his Third Symphony featured at the 1979 Proms and his chamber opera The Garden at South Bank Centre in 1998), Tal wrote in all the main genres. His piano music, moving from overt Expressionism to innate Atonalism, is accorded focus by its motivic rigour.

This is evident from the earliest piece here – Chaconne being a consummate study in ‘less is more’ such that its variations on an austerely rhetorical theme merge into an intensifying and cumulative whole, capped by an epiphanic calm prior to the inevitability of a final onslaught. Elements of this language are further explored by the Three Pieces which, in their respective volatility, impetuousness or introspection, denote the influence of Schoenberg’s piano pieces -albeit less those emotional extremes of his Op. 11 than that fastidious subtlety of his Op. 23.

A subtlety duly refined in the Six Sonnets, miniatures of a formal ingenuity and expressive poise out of all proportion to their brevity. From there to the Sonata is to emerge at a crucial stylistic juncture in Tal’s output: again, the modest dimensions (each of its three movements lasting around four minutes) only makes more acute that growing ominousness of its initial movement, the plangency of its central Basso Ostinato (a favoured device throughout Tal’s career) then the mounting impetus of its final Rondo toward a viscerally unequivocal close.

Arranged from a theatrical work, By the Rivers of Babylon conveys a measure of eloquence prior to what became the most radical phase of Tal’s composing. Hence the Concerto No. 5 as replaces orchestra with electronics in a substantial single movement which, whatever the timbral limitations of its magnetic tape, ensures a tense while often combative interplay of mutually opposing forces. This intensity is channelled into the Five Densities, such that its starkly contrasted first four pieces find unlikely yet convincing rapprochement in the fifth.

The remaining works form part of a sequence that extends across Tal’s final creative decades. Essay IV moves stealthily between sharply distinct ideas to an ending which does not resolve but simply cease, and Essay V is more demonstrative as it heads to its terse yet forceful close.

Does it all work?

Indeed it does. A figure nowadays admired more for what his music represents than for what it achieves, Tal left a legacy which is highly significant in or of itself (and one which, unlike almost all Israeli composers of his generation, audibly transcends the idiom of Ernest Bloch). His piano output exemplifies that technical precision, underpinning a creative spontaneity, as are hallmarks of his maturity and which help make this music as relevant to our day as to his own. It also makes for an engrossing and sometimes even entertaining listen in its own right.

Is it recommended?

Indeed it is. Only the Sonata has previously been recorded, and Ofra Yitzhaki’s empathy with this music cannot be denied. Superbly recorded and informatively annotated, this deserves an enthusiastic recommendation, with hopefully a follow-up of Tal’s other piano works to come.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the NEOS Music website. Click on the names to read more about pianist Ofra Yitzhaki and composer Josef Tal

Published post no.2,918 – Monday 15 June 2026

On Record – Linda Kouvaras: Piano Music, Chamber Works and Songs, Vol. 2 (Toccata Classics)

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Tiriki Onus (narrator), Coady Green (piano), Roger Alsop (sound design) – Herring Island Piano Sonata; Jane Magão (soprano), Karen Van Spall (mezzo-soprano), Georgia Lewis (piano) – Winter Came Early

Linda Kouvaras
Herring Island Piano Sonata
Winter Came Early

Toccata Classics TOCC0734 [78’33”] English text included
Producer / Engineer Haig Burnell

Recorded 16 & 24 November 2023 (Herring Island Piano Sonata), February 2024 (Winter Came Early)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics issues the second volume in its ongoing survey of chamber and vocal works by Linda Kouvaras (b.1960), comprising two sizable pieces that examine those genres of the piano sonata and the song-cycle from unlikely while always thought-provoking perspectives.

What’s the music like?

A veteran of the New Wave scene from the early 1980s, Kouvaras studied in London and her native Melbourne where she has pursued her career as an academic and composer. Especially notable is her output for ensemble, with or without voices, which is currently being recorded by Toccata. Its second instalment demonstrates a keen sense of how to broaden and diversify genres that could all too easily be taken for granted as regards precedent then, in the process, making these relevant to the artistic and the cultural concerns of those having inspired them.

Inspired then dedicated to the physical and historical facets of an artificial islet in Melbourne, Herring Island Piano Sonata amalgamates an abstract entity with a text by N’arweet Carolyn Briggs and spoken by Tiriki Onus in the context of an environmental soundscape from Roger Alsop – though the piano component can also be performed independently (and can be heard here by selecting tracks 2, 3, 5 and 7). Musically it typifies Kouvaras’ predilection for modal harmonies and vibrant textures, allied to a determined if never excessive virtuosity. Just how far this three-way interplay comes together is for each listener to decide, though there can be no doubt as to the ambition of the whole. To which end, a visual (not necessarily illustrative) component might have helped with integrating these already interrelated aspects further still.

Written immediately before, Winter Came Early is a song-cycle to poems by Melbourne poet Catherine Lewis whose untimely death and her posthumous legacy is directly commemorated. The presence, indeed frequent concurrence, of two female voices represents a mother and her daughter – the latter being pianist Georgina Lewis who also contributes the central poem that gives the work its title – heard alternately and in dialogue, though this could be considered too much of a good thing given the overlap in vocal lines and consequent blurring of words such as makes it difficult (if not impossible) to discern what is being sung. Musically, the sequence alternates between knowledge of encroaching death and recollection of earlier but not always happier times, rounded off by an ‘Epilogue’ that sets the poet’s final love-note to her husband.

Does it all work?

For the most part. Kouvaras is evidently a composer with an inquiring mind and the means to realize her intentions, though the element of mixed media sometimes works to the detriment of her music by drawing attention away from its intrinsic content. All the performers provide contributions of unfailing sincerity, but there remains a feeling of sensory overload or merely reluctance to let this music speak on its own terms. Try those sonata tracks detailed above, or the final four tracks (11-14) of the song-cycle, to hear her music at its most communicative.

Is it recommended?

Yes, with these reservations in mind. Those who are unfamiliar with this composer would be best advised to start with the first volume in this survey (TOCC0729) with its works for solo piano or saxophone and piano that, in their different ways, find her music at its most potent.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Toccata Classics website. Click on the names to read more about performers Jane Magão, Karen Van Spall, Tiriki Onus, Coady Green, Georgina Lewis and Roger Alsop, and composer Linda Kouvaras

Published post no.2,916 – Saturday 12 June 2026

On Record: Lesley-Jane Rogers – Hommage: Tributes to Handel & Purcell (Heritage Records)

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Lesley-Jane Rogers (soprano), John Turner (recorder), Jonathan Price (cello), Jonathan Bielby (harpsichord)

Ruth Zechlin Hommage á Henry Purcell (1997); Hommage á Handel (2004)
Robin Walker Handel to his Soul (2006)
Pepusch When Love’s Soft Passion (pub. 1720)
Purcell The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation, Z196; Oedipus, Z583 (1678) – Music for a while; The Indian Queen, Z630 (1695) – I attempt from love’s sickness to fly
Telemann Cello Sonata in D major TWV41: D6 (pub. 1728-9)
Handel Nel Dolce del’Oblio, HWV134 (1709)

Heritage Records HTGCD118 [73’06”] Texts and translations included
Remastering Engineer Paul Arden-Taylor

Live performance on 14 June 2006 at Händel-Haus, Halle an der Saale

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Heritage releases what was actually a live performance, given at the original ‘Handel House’ in the composer’s hometown of Halle while featuring an imaginative miscellany of Baroque and Contemporary works, all expertly realized by soprano, recorder, cello and harpsichord.

What’s the music like?

The sub-title says it all – tributes to Handel and Purcell that range from pieces by both these composers to works which wear their ‘hommage’ credentials not a little obliquely. Purcell is heard in evergreen extracts from his incidental music to Oedipus and semi-opera The Indian Queen elegantly sung by Lesley-Jane Rogers, who renders the interplay of recitative and aria in The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation with real eloquence. Handel rounds off this programme with Nel Dolce del’Oblio (In the Sweetness of Oblivion), one of several Italian cantatas that helped establish his reputation prior to his arrival in England. Again, a fine performance that respects this music’s expressive deftness and understatement though without making it seem trite or lightweight; failings which are not so uncommon in latter-day accounts of this music.

Also featured is a cello sonata drawn from Telemann’s collection Der Getreue Musikmeister (The Faithful Music-Master), its simple alternation of Largo and Allegro movements belying the piece’s overall motivic subtlety. Interest naturally attaches to the cantata When Love’s Soft Passion by Johann Pepusch, remembered for his musical contribution to The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay (and lesser-known sequel Polly) but who wrote extensively for various genres – among them the secular cantata, hence the poise and sensuous appeal of the present example.

Two of the contemporary works are by Ruth Zechlin (1926-2007), among the most prominent composers in what was East Germany, whose expertise as harpsichordist or organist informed her own works. Hommage á Henry Purcell juxtaposes recorder and harpsichord with pointed humour redolent of Mauricio Kagel, whereas Hommage á Handel comprises settings of three Shakespeare sonnets (Nos. 36, 78 and 46) with their music derived from three Handel arias to verses by Barthold Brockes. Even more engrossing is Handel to his Soul, a cantata setting his own text by Robin Walker (b.1953) who, known primarily for some seismic orchestral works (Toccata Classics TOCC0283), brings comparable insight to this thought-provoking trialogue between the composer, his soul and the goddess Proserpina – its music being witty and ironic.

Does it all work?

Yes, not least as collated into a programme which elides nimbly if meaningfully between the musical past and present. All credit to the musicians that these performances are so idiomatic across the board, thereby bringing works separated by over three centuries into enlightening accord. Whether the present release is taken from a radio broadcast or an archive recording, its sound lacks nothing in spaciousness or focus; enabling Rogers’s excellent annunciation to come through unimpeded. An occasion which was decidedly making available commercially.

Is it recommended?

It is. The booklet has decent notes and full texts (if not all English translations) – making for a worthy tribute to Percy M. Young (1912-2004), renowned music scholar and soccer historian, in whose memory this concert was sponsored by the British Professional Football Association.

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options at the Heritage Records website. Click on the names for more information on Lesley-Jane Rogers, John Turner, Jonathan Price, Jonathan Bielby, Ruth Zechlin, Robin Walker and the Händel-Haus

Published post no.2,914 – Thursday 11 June 2026